Bulldog up for sale

Give the dog a bone

Cable & Wireless is to sell its residential broadband business Bulldog.

The telco provider announced less than a month ago that it was pulling out of residential broadband, but promised continuing support for existing customers.

At the time, the firm said it would concentrate on selling wholesale broadband services to other providers.

Bulldog sent us the following statement:

In line with our UK business strategy of serving the UK's largest users of telecoms here and internationally with IP-based services - and with our recent announcement to wholesale our local loop capability to other carriers - we are now looking for a provider to buy our Bulldog retail customer base.

There are a number of compelling reasons for this move; chiefly that it allows us to simplify our relationship with our wholesale customers - by making clear that we will not compete with them - and to simplify our operations. In addition, these customers are of more strategic value to providers focusing on a retail play.

We expect this process to take a couple of months - and will update you as appropriate.

Broadband providers with small market share are starting to struggle. As ever bigger brands coming to market with bundled offers, it's getting harder to make a crust. Bulldog has some 120,000 customers.

The news comes with the arrival of a host of bundled services, or so-called "free broadband" offers, from Carphone Warehouse, Orange, and O2. Sky has said it will launch broadband services this summer. AOL is also rumoured to be selling its European access business.

So, it could be a mobile company that picks up Bulldog - O2 and Vodafone have been mentioned in the past, but O2 paid £50m for Be in June. ®